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Mueller’s probe breaks out into the open

Illustration: Sam Jayne / Axios

Robert Mueller's Russia investigation has been conducted almost entirely in secret. Today, the Special Counsel made two very public moves, issuing indictments against former campaign officials Paul Manafort and Rick Gates and revealing that George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the campaign, has already pleaded guilty to lying to investigators and been actively cooperating with the probe.

Below, we round up how it all went down, why it matters, and where we go from here.

How it went down

Shortly before 8am: News drops that the looming indictments are for Manafort and Gates

8:15am: Manafort turns himself in

9am: The indictment showing the charges against Manafort and Gates is released

10:25am: Trump takes to Twitter

10:30am: The Papadopoulos news breaks

1:30pm: Manafort and Gates appear in court, pleading "not guilty" to all charges

The charges

Manafort and Gates face: Conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading Foreign Agent Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. Manafort faces up to about 15 year in prison and Gates up to about 10.

Papadopoulos pleaded guilty earlier this month to lying to federal officials about his contacts with Russians. He faces zero to six months in prison under the plea deal.

Inside the West Wing

Just minutes before the senior-most White House staff walked into Roosevelt Room for their morning meeting with Chief of Staff John Kelly, their phones lit up with news alerts of the first indictments in the Mueller probe.

There was relief that it was Manafort and not Michael Flynn. But there was also concern.

Inside the courtroom

Manafort appeared in person, with his lawyer saying he "definitely disagrees with the strength of the indictment" against him. Gates' court-appointed lawyer said he was invoking the 5th Amendment, and planned to hire private counsel. Both pleaded not guilty, and they are now under house arrest.

What's Trump saying?

Sanders said Trump received the news "without a lot of reaction, because it doesn't have anything to do with us."

The Washington Postpaints a different picture, of a "fuming" Trump: "Separated from most of his West Wing staff — who fretted over why he was late getting to the Oval Office — Trump clicked on the television and spent the morning playing fuming media critic, legal analyst and crisis communications strategist, according to several people close to him."

What are Democrats saying?

They're worried that Trump will interfere with Mueller's investigation, or even try to have him fired. Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders and Mark Warner were among those sounding the alarm.

Who is Gates?

Manafort's former business partner and protege. He followed Manafort onto the campaign and stayed after Manafort was forced out, even visiting the White House after Trump took office.

"[He could] go to jail because his long-term partner decided to go work for Donald Trump," Paul Rosenzweig, former deputy secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security, told Axios. "What he did likely would not have seen the light of day...He's my Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer squared character in this drama...the man whose life is ruined by being sucked into the Trump tornado."

Who is Papadopoulos?

As Swan writes, he was something of a "campaign nobody": Many top figures on the campaign genuinely had no idea who he was. Some White House officials had to resort to Google when the news broke this morning.

In March 2016, Papadopoulos tried to set up a meeting with Russian leadership and the Trump campaign team. He sent an email to the foreign policy team, according to Washington Post, promising a "meeting with Russian Leadership - Including Putin."

Remaining questions

The events in question took place just days after Papadopoulos joined the campaign. So was Papadopoulos — known for embellishing details of his resume in the past — making legitimate overtures or just a young staffer trying to impress his bosses with foreign policy connections?

Smart takes

Lawfare blog: "Mueller's opening bid is a remarkable show of strength. He has a cooperating witness from inside the campaign's interactions with the Russians. And he is alleging not mere technical infractions of law but astonishing criminality on the part of Trump's campaign manager, a man who also attended the Trump Tower meeting."

Daily Beast's Lachlan Markay: "Before Manafort/Gates, DOJ had brought just four criminal prosecutions under FARA in the last 10 years. All resulted in convictions."

Worth noting

Tony Podesta is stepping down as the head of his powerhouse lobbying firm, The Podesta Group, per Politico. The firm got pulled into Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation over public relations work it completed on behalf of Paul Manafort to promote Ukrainian interests in the United States. Podesta's brother John was Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman.

Catch up quick

What's next?

Manafort and Gates have their next hearing on Thursday, but their trial is likely at least six months away. Beyond that, only Mueller really knows. Meanwhile, a number of folks around town will be jumping every time they hear a knock on the door.

A White House olive branch: no plan to fire Mueller

After a weekend at war with the Mueller investigation, the White House is extending an olive branch. Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer handling the probe, plans to issue this statement:

“In response to media speculation and related questions being posed to the Administration, the White House yet again confirms that the President is not considering or discussing the firing of the Special Counsel, Robert Mueller.”

Why it matters: The White House strategy had been to cooperate with Mueller. So this is an effort to turn down the temperature after a weekend of increasingly personal provocations aimed at the special counsel.

John Dowd, a member of Trump's legal team, said Saturday that the investigation should be shut down "on the merits."

And Trump tweeted: "Why does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans? Another Dem recently added...does anyone think this is fair? And yet, there is NO COLLUSION!"

Trump's trade plan that would blow up the WTO

For months, President Donald Trump has been badgering his economic advisors to give him broad, unilateral authority to raise tariffs — a move that would all but break the World Trade Organization.

His favorite word: “reciprocal.” He’s always complaining to staff about the fact that the U.S. has much lower tariffs on some foreign goods than other countries have on the same American-made goods. The key example is cars: The European Union has a 10 percent tariff on all cars, including those manufactured in America, and China hits all foreign-made cars with 25 percent tariffs. But the U.S. only charges 2.5 percent for foreign cars we import.

Trump and ascendant nationalist economic advisor Peter Navarro think this is wildly unfair. So the president wants Congress to pass a bill to let him raise tariffs to reciprocal levels, according to three sources with direct knowledge.

One source familiar with Trump's thinking told me that Trump doesn't want to raise tariffs — he wants to use the new power this bill would give him as leverage to force other countries to lower theirs. Some of his advisers, including Gary Cohn, have told associates this won't work and could lead to a trade war. CNBC's Eamon Javers was the first to report this development.

Trump initially asked senior officials, including then-Staff Secretary Rob Porter, to draft an executive order to let him do it unilaterally. Porter and others explained he couldn't legally do that by himself. So now, Trump is asking for a bill.

Trump's idea would effectively break the WTO. One of the core WTO principles — which has underpinned globalization and trade for 70 years — is an idea called "most favored nation status."​ Countries that belong to the WTO have all agreed to charge the same tariff rate for imports from all other WTO members.

Wealthier nations like the U.S. have tended to commit to lower tariff rates than poorer nations. The U.S. can re-negotiate tariff rates, but is supposed to go through the WTO process — and whatever rate they re-negotiate they have to give to everybody else. Trump doesn't like that. He wants to match tariffs nation-by-nation, product-by-product.

This is probably dead-on-arrival in Congress: Most Republicans on the Hill are free-traders and nearly universally opposed to Trump's tariffs. They won't get behind this. And a source familiar with Trump's legislative affairs team's thinking says such a bill has little chance of success. Trump, however, thinks the idea is a no-brainer. He mused aloud to staff in an Oval Office meeting last week, "Who could be against reciprocal?"

Why it matters: Trump is just getting started on his hardline trade mission. Gary Cohn and Rob Porter were among the few in the White House who would fight for free trade policies. Once they’re gone, the most influential voices on trade will be economic nationalists (with the possible exception of Larry Kudlow; we’ll have to wait and see if he’ll start off his tenure as chief economic advisor by going to war with the president over trade.)

What else to watch for: Aggressive tariffs against China. As Politico first reported, when Trump's team presented him with a package of tariffs that would target the equivalent of $30 billion a year in Chinese imports, Trump told them he wanted even bigger tariffs.

Axios has further learned that in an Oval Office meeting on Thursday, Trump told Kevin Hassett, the chair of his Council of Economic Advisers: "Kevin, you've gotta make the number bigger." Hassett told Trump he'd have to go away and study the potential impacts of these larger tariffs against China, according to a source familiar with the interaction. Two sources with direct knowledge tell me the administration's current tentative plan is to potentially put tariffs on hundreds of Chinese products by the end of March.